


Waking Up

by GilbertsDoor



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Kieren is confused, Partially Deceased Syndrome, Treatment centre, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29048319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilbertsDoor/pseuds/GilbertsDoor
Summary: Kieren's first moments when he wakes up at the treatment centre. It can't be real, can it?Also posted on fanfiction.net
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> Just my take on what Kieren might have thought when he first woke up from being treated at the treatment centre.

'Hello? Hello?'

For a moment it was the only word that Kieren could remember. He must have been hungover. Really really hungover. His head was pounding, his eyes were fuzzy. Every time he tried to latch onto a thought in his mind it seemed to slip quickly away, like trying to catch a bar of soap in the bath. His ears felt like they were underwater too, waiting to pop. The only thing that seemed to work was his voice and the only thing he seemed to be able to say was –

'HELLO?'

He shouted the word this time. It echoed around him. His thoughts felt like they were both crawling along at a snail’s pace and whooshing by a mile a minute. He tried not to panic as his mind focussed and he realised he was in some kind of asylum. He was shackled by chains to a wall, for Christ's sake, and wearing some kind of plain robes with stains in odd places. The walls weren't padded though, they were tiled. Easy to wipe down, although they hadn't really been cleaned at all. They were covered in black and red smears, and there was a puddle on the floor with a big lump lying in it, a lump of –

'Oh God,' Kieran managed to say. There was a man across the room lying in thick, black liquid that had pooled around him. He wasn't moving.

This was like the start of a horror film. Someone was going to come in with a chain saw at any minute and cut him into pieces, then stitch him back together with his fingers sticking out of his face. A thought that seemed to stick in his mind was that perhaps he should stop drawing attention to himself.

He lowered his voice to a fraction of its previous volume when he whispered, 'Are you alright?'

The man didn't respond. Oh god, he really was dead.

The door swung open and Kieren nearly jumped out of his skin. A woman in a white coat with a clipboard came in, her eyebrows raised.

'You're awake,' she stated. Kieren stared at her. She looked back. Her gaze seemed to be assessing him, looking over his face and body. With his hands chained up like they were, it wasn't a good feeling. 'You took a while to respond. We thought maybe you were a lost cause, but you were the one just calling out, yes?'

Kieren nodded before he could really think about it.

His voice felt scratchy and unused, but he managed to say 'What have you done to him?' His voice cracked a bit on the word "done". 'Is he dead?' Kieren gestured with his chin towards the unresponsive man on the floor.

'Oh,' she smiled, walking forwards into the room. 'You're northern. So far I've only dealt with Londoners.'

Kieren didn't really know what to say to that.

She was now stood just out of reach, holding the clipboard against her hip. Her other hand twiddled a pen against her leg. She kept looking him over for a long moment, before she made a few notes on the paper.

'Right,' she said. 'Try to stay calm, ok? I'm sure you're confused and have a lot of questions.'

'That's one way of putting it,' Kieren said weakly. 'I wake up...' he coughed a bit, clearing his throat, '...and I'm in some horror-film death chamber with my hands shackled to a wall.'

'We're not here to hurt you, I promise. You've been… ill, shall we say. We've had to chain you up here for your own safety, and for the safety of others.'

Kieren's brain went swinging back to asylum again, and then he looked down at his shackled hands, and then his wrists, and the bandages on them, and his last memories started permeating through his brain.

'Oh God, no…' It hadn't worked. It obviously hadn't worked, and now he was here, and they thought he was insane.

The doctor, Kieren guessed she was a doctor, frowned a little at him.

'Listen, is this because I... look, I know it might seem like a crazy thing to do, but I'm not crazy, alright? I promise, and... and... I know that most crazy people probably tell you they're not crazy, but I just...' His voice trailed out, but he tried to looked her dead in the eye and appear as sincere as possible.

'This isn't an asylum, if that's what you think,' the doctor said calmly, bending down to sit on her heels, blocking half of Kieren’s view of the dead guy across the room. She was still safely out of reach of both of them.

'Why do I feel so strange?' Kieren said, looking down at his hands as if they didn't belong to him. He couldn't feel any pain from the wounds that were most likely stitched and bandaged beneath. The skin on his hands looked grey.

'What's the last thing you remember?'

'I...' Kieren looked up at her again, and in a very quiet voice said, 'I tried to kill myself.'

The doctor nodded. She looked a little sad.

'Can you tell me your name?'

'Kieren Walker.'

She made a note of that on the clipboard. 'Kieren, ok. It's nice to meet you. I'm Doctor Jones. There's a lot to tell you, and it might all come as a bit of a shock.'

He nodded at her to continue, although his eyes kept being drawn back to the slumped body behind her.

'From what you've told me, and what we've observed, I can confirm that yes, you tried to kill yourself, and…' she took a breath. 'Please, don't be alarmed, but… you succeeded.'

Kieren couldn't quite focus on her words, he was trying to trace back through everything she'd said and tie it together.

'I... succeeded?' Kieren repeated very quietly.

The doctor nodded slowly. 'You died.'

Kieren laughed, he felt so awkward. 'I… don't understand.'

Doctor Jones sighed, and again she sounded very sad. 'Like I said, there's a lot to explain, and I really think it would be better not to do it sitting on a cold floor. Just wait here a moment whilst I get the key, alright?'

He wanted to reach out and hold her arm so she couldn't leave. He had succeeded… in killing himself?

This had to be some kind of joke.

Another doctor came in as she left. He knelt down by the man on the floor and rolled him over slightly.

Oh. The realisation hit Kieren and he felt a wave of relief wash over him.

Jones came back in and both doctors exchanged a look over the body. The male doctor shook his head.

She came forwards and Kieren found himself smiling placidly at her as she knelt down and took up one of his shackles.

Jones didn't use the key for a moment, looking at him sideways. 'Your mood seems to have changed a little.'

Kieren nodded, laughing slightly. 'This is a dream.'

The other doctor had come to stand beside them, and the two doctors exchanged a look.

It didn't matter though. Kieren had never felt more confident. 'I've realised I'm dreaming before, when I'm halfway through. I'll probably wake up in a minute. I usually do.' He couldn't seem to pronouce 'probably' properly. His voice still felt so cracked.

The doctor unlocked his wrist.

'Did I actually do it? Or was that part of the dream too?' Kieren muttered to himself. The other doctor had a hold of the clipboard now and he began scribbling quickly.

Jones got up and walked around Kieren to reach his other wrist, and as she did Kieren heard her mutter 'I hate this part,' whatever that meant.

She unlocked the chain and heaved him to his feet. His legs felt like dead weights hanging beneath him.

'Is Rick de... oh God, please say that's the dream too. It was all a dream. Rick never even left. I dreamt it all. It would make sense.' Kieren stared at the ground, rubbing his hands over his wrists, letting his eyes follow the lines between the tiles. 'He always said my imagination was crazy. Or… what if I'm not asleep, and I did it, and I'm bleeding out now, and my mind is making up this place.' Kieren snapped his gaze to the doctors, flicking between them in turn. They were both watching him with serious expressions.

Kieren shook his head, laughter in his voice. 'No, either way, you guys can't be real, sorry.'

'Kieren, please just come with us to somewhere we can sit down and talk.'

Kieren shrugged and nodded in agreement. The doctors shared another look. Kieren tried to follow them as they walked out but then he stumbled and fell forwards, grabbing onto the sleeve of the male doctor.

'God, sorry, sorry,' he said, laughing. 'I feel strange.' When he tried to walk, a fuzziness hit him in the head again. He didn't find this so funny, and pressed his palm into his forehead, scrunching up his eyes.

'Don't worry. Lean on me for a minute. We're not going far.'

It took a good few paces for Kieren to remember how to walk again, which was a little odd. Everything about this was odd. Usually in his dreams he didn't ever walk anywhere, he just flitted from one scene to the next, like cuts in a film transition. And he could never normally feel things so physically in dreams, even though the feelings he was experiencing now seemed half as strong as what he normally would have felt, like he was numb from the cold or something.

They led him down a corridor and into a little room with a desk and a few chairs. Once Kieren was seated the male doctor put the clipboard down and left.

'So, as I said, my name is Doctor Jones.' She clasped her hands in front of her on the desk. 'Right, Kieren, I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm saying, alright? And I want you to try to stay calm.'

Kieren nodded with a bit of a laugh, although it felt a little hollow in his throat. 'This is feeling less and less like a dream.'

'Firstly, I want to reiterate that you're safe here, alright? We're not going to hurt you. Actually, we've been looking after you for a while, and we're trying to get you back to how you used to be.' She took a breath, shifting her hands slightly. 'You've just woken up, and your brain is trying to make sense of all this, so it's understandable that you might think that you're imagining this, but I can assure you that you're not.'

Kieren stared at her for a moment. That had been a lot of words all at once. The fuzziness seemed to be dancing at the conners of his consciousness.

Doctor Jones seemed to sense this. 'This is the real world, alright?'

Kieren nodded slowly. He clutched at his wrist again. It didn't hurt, but he could feel a solid ridge beneath his fingers. He believed her. This wasn't imaginary, and his mind was trudging slowly back through all the information he'd been given.

He looked down at his lap, picking at the bandage on his wrist now. 'You said that I'm dead.'

Doctor Jones shook her head. 'No, I said that you died.'

Another possibility had come sauntering into his head. Kieren laughed again as he spoke, even though he wasn't remotely amused. 'This can't be, I mean, I'm not in...?'

He looked up, and Jones gave him an encouraging look.

He said the words very quietly, as if to say it was to make it so. 'Am I in hell?'

Bill Macy had always said it was where Kieren was headed, perhaps the bastard had been right all along.

The doctor blinked. 'Funnily enough, you're the first person who's asked me that.'

'Do they not like you to know you're in hell when you're in hell?'

It definitely wasn't heaven. They didn't have people chained to the wall and dead bodies in heaven. Purgatory was a valid consideration, but...

'No, no. You're not in hell, Kieren. I promise.' She leant back in her chair. 'Look, I'm going to explain and get it all out in the open.'

Kieren nodded. There was a loose strand on his bandage and he tried to wrap it around his finger without looking at it.

'There was a night, over 18 months ago now, when people who had died rose from their graves. They came back, and they could move and walk around, but they were in a rabid state and then they started hunting people to... eat their brains.'

Think about the words, Kieren thought, almost desperately. What was she saying? Rising from graves, rabid state, eating brains… Only an idiot wouldn't know what she was describing.

Kieren looked down again at his hands, at the grey tinge that was on his skin, the thin blue veins that were stark beneath his skin, the blackened fingernails.

'People fought against them for a while, but eventually a drug was developed that can return the people who died to a state of consciousness. The drug doesn't bring them back to life completely, I should say, but it makes them, at least mentally, return to what they used to be like. Their normal personalities come back.' She leant towards him again, as if closing the distance between them would be reassuring. 'You're one of the lucky ones, Kieren, because the drug doesn't work on everyone, as you may have seen with the man in your cell.'

Kieren was still looking at his hands. 'I'm one of them, then. The ones who died and came back.'

'Yes, you're one of them.'

'I'm a zombie.'

'No, no, not a zombie. You have what we're calling a syndrome. A partially deceased syndrome.'

Kieren remembered all of a sudden that he could move, and he pulled at the bandages on his wrists quickly, desperately. He couldn't untie them, but he managed to pull them down enough to see. There was no blood, no scab, no pink healing flesh. It was purple and black. The stitches didn't look thin and medical. They were thick and had only closed the gap in his flesh in a way that looked completely wrong... completely dead.

'Oh God!' He held his hands at arm's length, pushing at the edge of the desk, wanting to be as far away from the evidence as possible.

The doctor reached out, touching one of his hands gently. He couldn't feel her skin like he normally would have. If he had closed his eyes it would have felt like she was touching him through a rubber glove.

'It's ok, I know it's shocking, but your body doesn't have the ability to heal itself, so these stitches will have to stay in, I'm afraid.'

'I can't feel them,' Kieren let out, and his voice cracked in a sob. 'Shouldn't they hurt? Shouldn't I be bleeding?' He was shaking his head. 'This isn't what I wanted.' He couldn't seem to stop shaking his head. 'I just wanted to sleep, I...' his voice cracked again. 'I'm a monster.'

'You're not a monster,' said the doctor. She was writing on the clip board again, before looking back at him. 'You're back, and we're going to help you through this, alright?'

Kieren looked at her. He felt like he should have tears in his eyes, but they were bone dry.

'We're going to take each day as it comes. We'll talk through everything properly, give you therapy, answer all your questions. You're not alone in this, alright?'

'What does my face look like?' He twisted his head and tried to catch his reflection in the window, but the daylight outside was too bright. All he could see was grey tarmac and barbed wire fencing.

'You won't be allowed to see what you look like just yet, but you'll soon meet others who are the same as you.'

'How many people are like this?'

'Thousands. You're not alone.'

Kieren took in a shaky breath. 'I shouldn't be here. I just wanted to sleep. This isn't what I wanted. My body feels like it doesn't belong to me.'

This doctor, this place, this reality. It was all wrong.

He had just wanted to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed :)


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